“You have said that the she bear killed the children in 2 Kings 2:22-24 because of Israel’s sin (Lev. 26:14,22). Others explain those difficult verses by saying the Hebrew words for ‘little children’ referred to older kids, who may not have all died. Could this be so instead?”
If these were not little children, they were over the age of accountability. And since most older children are not saved, that would mean most of these children went to hell because of the sins of their nation. It is far more just to believe that they were little children who went to be with the Lord when they died.
And I don’t think there is any way to read that word “rob” (Lev. 26:22) and conclude those children didn’t die. Wild beasts don’t rob parents of their children by injuring them. They rob them by killing them.
The law was a covenant, which is an old word for a contract. If the people of Israel broke the terms of the contract, God was bound by the laws of justice and righteousness to keep His part of the contract and punish them in the manner specified in the covenant. If He didn’t, He could rightly be charged with breaking His Word and being unfaithful to His own covenant
To the Reader:
Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:
"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."
To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.